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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26825512">i'm a caution taker (you're a force of nature)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayybug/pseuds/jayybug'>jayybug</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Based On A Panic! At The Disco Song, Getting Together, Kozume Kenma is So Done, Kuroo Tetsurou is a Mess, M/M, Meet-Cute, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, There is a cat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:49:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,125</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26825512</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayybug/pseuds/jayybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“I have a library card. Do you mind if I check you out?” the guy said, sending a wink Kenma’s way and somehow leaning even closer.</p>
  <p>Blinking at him one, twice, Kenma’s mouth dropped open. What had he been saying about idiots earlier? “This isn’t a library.” He picked his game back up and resumed his position from earlier, lighting the screen up but not doing anything else. “It’s a bookstore. Can I help you with something?”</p>
  <p>Peeking up from behind the curtain of hair that had fallen to obscure his face, Kenma could see the wide-eyed look and slowly pinkening cheeks of the other man. He clapped one hand over his mouth and scribbled onto the paper some more before handing it over to Kenma.</p>
  <p>  <i>Curse. Asshole friend practicing stupid spells he saw online and one hit me. Need to find something on how to reverse it. Got anything for that?</i></p>
</blockquote>Kenma was perfectly fine living his life without a soulmate, but his whole world was flipped upside down when one Kuroo Tetsurou stumbled into his life with an annoying problem and an even <i>more</i> annoying smile.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i'm a caution taker (you're a force of nature)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kenma’s eyes were trained on the game he’s been hiding under the counter for the past thirty minutes. Work had been so slow, which was perfectly fine with <em> him </em> because that just meant he didn’t have to actually do anything. Yaku would probably think otherwise--would probably be getting after him for wasting company time--but Yaku wasn’t here and it was too <em> early </em> to be <em> moving around. </em></p><p>As if on cue, a huge yawn split his lips, his ears popping along with it.</p><p>Eventually, people would start shuffling in, asking him questions about where to find the latest edition of their favorite spell book, if he had read ‘insert book title here’ and was it any good, and he would definitely get at least <em> one </em> person asking about love potions and ‘how to find your soulmate’. </p><p>Kenma rolled his eyes--everyone knew that you wouldn’t find your soulmate until Fate decided it was time, but that didn’t stop the hopefuls from trying to move it a little faster. He set his game down for a second and examined his right arm, taking in, not for the first time, the completely bare skin there. Marks could appear anywhere on the body, but everyone in his family had their marks there--big, small, in shades of gray or fully colored. Not him, though.</p><p>Soulmate-less.</p><p>
  <em> Idiots. </em>
</p><p>On screen, his character died, taking an arrow to the chest.</p><p>The bells hanging on the door jingled as someone stepped through the threshold quickly. The man was tall and dishevelled, the hair on top of his head looking like a bird had made its home there recently. He was wearing a nervous smile when he approached with long strides.</p><p>Their eyes met, and for half a second, Kenma thought he felt something zap through his body, an odd tingle spreading from the center of his stomach out towards his fingers and toes, but then it was gone before he knew it and the man began to approach, scribbling something in the little notebook in his hands.</p><p>He leaned on the counter, and up close, Kenma could see the dents his sharp canines made in his lips as he chewed at them nervously. <em> Weird observation, </em> Kenma thought, nearly ready to smack himself to snap out of whatever <em> bizarre </em> thing was happening right now . </p><p>“I have a library card. Do you mind if I check you out?” the guy said, sending a wink Kenma’s way and somehow leaning even closer.</p><p>Blinking at him one, twice, Kenma’s mouth dropped open. What had he been saying about idiots earlier? “This isn’t a library.” He picked his game back up and resumed his position from earlier, lighting the screen up but not doing anything else. “It’s a bookstore. Can I help you with something?”</p><p>Peeking up from behind the curtain of hair that had fallen to obscure his face, Kenma could see the wide-eyed look and slowly pinkening cheeks of the other man. He clapped one hand over his mouth and scribbled onto the paper some more before handing it over to Kenma.</p><p>
  <em> Curse. Asshole friend practicing stupid spells he saw online and one hit me. Need to find something on how to reverse it. Got for that? </em>
</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Kenma answered out loud. The other guy's eyes lit up and he threw a thumb over his shoulder, his head tipping in a silent question. <em> Can you help me? </em> He didn’t seem put off by the quiet sigh that left Kenma’s mouth; in fact, his smile only widened, which was usually <em> not </em> the reaction to Kenma’s reluctance to help the customers. “I guess,” he finished awkwardly.</p><p>“The name’s Kuroo Tetsurou, by the way,” the man said. His smile widened, perhaps at the lack of an embarrassing line leaving his mouth. Kenma was about to comment on it when Kuroo began to speak again, his voice dipping low. “While you’re showing me the book, mind showing me the way to your heart?”</p><p>There was a groan and Kuroo dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I’m going to <em> kill </em> Bokuto.”</p><p>Kenma ducked his head again, trying to hide the laugh falling unbidden from his lips as he stepped around the counter and walked quickly towards the back half of the store.They kept their more specialized selections back there, and it seemed that this Kuroo guy needed some <em> serious </em>help.  </p><p>“Well. Here they are.” Kenma gestured to the shelves behind him, his shoulders pulled up to his ears. He hated being out from behind the counter--he felt too <em> seen </em> . It felt even worse with this guy--his gaze trailed his every feature as if it was searching for something, and it felt like little sparks following in its path. Kenma’s stomach flipped, filled with something like anxiety but <em> not quite. </em> “I’ll be over there if you need anything I guess.” He bit his lip, hesitating. “Maybe try to keep any embarrassing pick-up lines to yourself.”</p><p>Kuroo’s face turned pink, and Kenma did his best to not notice how <em> cute </em> it was. </p><p>Because it <em> wasn’t </em>.</p><p>This guy was embarrassing and a stranger and <em> not cute. </em></p><p>He turned around and walked back to the counter; Shiori, the little calico cat that had snuck into the shop a year ago and just stuck around, was sitting on the counter licking one paw primly. When Kenma sat down, she walked up to him, rubbing the length of her body across his chest and purring when he began to scratch behind her ears. </p><p>“What do you think, girl?” he asked her softly. “A total disaster, right?”</p><p>Shiori turned her head and tilted it as she stared off in the direction of Kuroo. She turned back to Kenma, butting his hands when he stopped scratching her, but he had already turned his attention back to his game.</p><p>With a final meow that somehow managed to sound offended, she jumped to the floor, knocking something off of the counter in the process. When Kenma looked towards the floor, he saw it was one of those magazines Lev was so obsessed with reading every week--the ones full of recipes that took way too much time and cheesy dating advice. </p><p>When he reached down to pick it up, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the giant text splashed across the page: TOP TEN WAYS TO ATTRACT YOUR SOULMATE!</p><p>
  <em> Yeah right. There’s nothing anyone can do to rush fate.  </em>
</p><p>Kenma heard a soft coo, and when he lifted his eyes from the stupid magazine he saw Kuroo kneeling down on the ground, scratching underneath Shiori’s chin.</p><p>His thoughts were drawn to the pale skin of his arm, free of any soulmarks. Fate had its own plans, and no matter how much someone might want--or <em> not </em> want-- something, once that plan was decided on, nothing could change its course.</p><p>Kuroo looked up then, meeting Kenma’s gaze with a smile. Feeling his own cheeks heating for some reason, Kenma ducked his head down to stare at his lap and fiddle with the buttons on his game. He was still listening though and caught Kuroo whispering conspiratorially to Shiori. "Alright, well as cute as you are, there's someone even <em> cuter </em> I want to talk to."</p><p>Kenma's head snapped up, eyes narrowing at Kuroo, but the other man wasn't paying attention, too busy smacking the book in his hands against his forehead. The corners of his lips ticked up without his permission and there was an odd sensation nagging at the back of his head but he couldn’t understand what it was trying to tell him.</p><p>A few moments later, Kuroo stood to his feet and presented Kenma with the book, mouth staying resolutely silent. It was clear that he was doing his best to not look at him, but he was kind of awful at it and Kenma still caught his wandering gaze when Kuroo thought he wasn’t looking. His hair fell in front of his eyes as he boredly punched in the book code on the register. </p><p>“Is this going to be all for you? I think I saw Yaku putting away a flirting for dummies book in the self-help section if you think that might help…” Kenma lifted his head, tilting it to the side and offering Kuroo a smirk. “Just in case your foot stays stuck in your mouth.”</p><p>Kuroo’s eyes widened and he choked on something (Kenma wasn’t really sure <em> what </em>) and shook his head, writing something down on his paper furiously. </p><p><em> Just this is fine, </em> <em> <strike>cutie. I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I could have your number to practice my lines on you?</strike> </em></p><p>Most of the message was crossed out so darkly that there were little tears in the paper, and Kenma couldn’t make out what it said, but judging by the way that Kuroo kept glancing at the door and shifting from foot to foot, it must have been something embarrassing. Whatever curse his friend put on him must be spreading.</p><p>After Kuroo paid for his book, he turned around and walked towards the door. The niggling feeling in the back of his head was growing stronger--he wouldn’t be surprised if he got a headache later--and he felt like he needed to say something for some reason, but he didn’t know what or <em> why </em>. </p><p>There was a split second where Kuroo twisted his torso back towards him, backlit by the sun shining through the big store windows, mouth falling open as if he was going to say something, but instead he merely offered a smile before rushing out of the store. The bell echoed in the now-empty store; usually (always), the quiet of the store was a welcomed reprieve, but now Kenma was finding it difficult to focus beating the enemies on screen. He couldn’t seem to get past their barrage of arrows, always finding a way to sneak past his line of defense and steal his last lives.</p><p>At least the buzzing in his head was gone, though, he supposed.</p>
<hr/><p>Kenma wasn’t really sure what Shoyo was rambling on about, but from what he could gather was that the other day, some potion he had been working on in class had completely blew up in his face and Kageyama laughed at him so now there was some competition going on between the two of them that honestly seemed increasingly dangerous. Not to mention all of the <em> effort </em>. </p><p>Any free time Kenma had between work and his classes was spent holed up in his room just the way he preferred. Tonight was an exception--as Shoyo often was--because he was forced to go to a certain number of research conferences or risk not graduating, and had been dragged to one in the next prefecture over because Shoyo wanted to go see some apparently famous researcher on the science of soulmates.</p><p>Kenma had spent the entire time playing his game under the table but no one there seemed to notice, too transfixed on the way that the speaker spoke about how soulmarks appeared, what the placement might say about the bond...the new findings about people born without any marks at all. </p><p>Totally useless if you asked him.</p><p>“Can you pass me that bottle by your knee, Kenma?” </p><p>“Hm?” Kenma asked distractedly. He was in a boss fight, one he’d been trying to beat since late last night, and he was <em> this </em> close to beating her. </p><p>Shoyo laughed at him. “The bottle right next to you. I think that’s where I went wrong last time. I need to show Tobio that I <em> can </em> do it and that he’s just a jerk. It’s <em> not </em> my fault that he mixed our stuff up in class last week and the whole batch blew up.”</p><p>“Oh. Uh, yeah.” Kenma barely lifted his gaze from his game, hand feeling around for the cool glass until his fingers bumped it. He reached out to Shoyo’s waiting hand but nearly dropped the item before he could make contact. The sleeve of his hoodie had slipped up his arm a little and he could see black lines of <em> something </em> peeking out. <em> What the hell? </em> </p><p>He handed the bottle off to Shoyo, who hadn’t yet noticed his evermounting concern, and hastily pulled the sleeve of his hoodie up to his elbow and his breath caught in his throat. It felt like there was static in his ears. Where there once had been nothing but bare, smooth skin, there were now two different, but equally beautiful flowers taking up the entirety of his right forearm.</p><p>Game forgotten in his lap, Kenma traced the outline of the delicate petals with wide eyes.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>His heart raced at the thought of what this meant.</p><p>
  <em> How annoying. </em>
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